W. Virginia Artist Fills His Own Tall Order : High-Rise Is the Talk of the Hollow

Michael Souch lives up a mountain hollow far from city lights, but he still aspires to a room with a view.

Seven years ago he decided to add a room to his small house in rural Monongalia County. Today, it towers seven stories high.

Souch, a 27-year-old unemployed college graduate, believes he has hammered his way into state history.

“I’ve been all over this state looking for one this high, but I haven’t found one,” he says.

It started with an add-on bathroom in 1977. Then he wanted a deck.

“Then I decided to make the deck into a room. Then I wanted a kitchen upstairs, and then I wanted a bedroom.”

Souch says he has used about 3,500 two-by-fours so far. He is still looking up.

“I think I’ll add a little tower room a half-story higher,” he says while admiring his creation.

Rooms Still Unfinished

The floors spanning 10 levels are connected by makeshift wooden ladders. Except for the house’s original two rooms, all remain unfinished.

Extension cords snake their way between floors. Fiberglass insulation peeks out from behind unfinished walls. Plywood and nails are scattered everywhere.

Unless you count the four cats, Souch lives alone. But he intends to marry one of these days and bring his bride to his creek-side castle.

He hasn’t won over his girlfriend yet.

“She thinks I’m nutty,” he says.

But Souch says only one neighbor in the hollow has expressed opposition to his high-rise house.

“Everybody’s pretty excited about it. All the miners talk about it.”

There isn’t much for miners to talk about in Jere. There aren’t a lot of miners left to talk. Thousands lived in and around the community until the Jere Mining Co. closed in the 1950s. Nowadays, the Purseglove 15 Mine a few miles north on Route 7 is the only active mine nearby.

And the barking of dogs and Souch’s hammering are just about the only things that disturb the silence that has settled over Jere.

Population 150

The population today is about 150. The townsfolk live along a single dirt road so small that the charcoal smell wafting from one coal stove lingers from one end of town to the other.

“My father was a coal miner. He was the one who built the original basement in this house,” Souch says. “We used to build little projects together; that’s how I got started. He wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t poor. When he died he left me the money to start a business.

“This is what I did instead.”

Even though the house is far from completed, surrealistic paintings by its owner already hang on some of the walls.

Souch hopes to gain fame not as the young man who built a seven-story house in a mining hollow but as an artist. His colorful paintings echo the modernist style of Picasso and depict houses and landmarks visible from his home.

Few Sales

Souch says his artwork has been exhibited at the Morgantown Arts Center and at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania, but he doesn’t sell many paintings in Jere. Unemployed miners are apt to choose a meal over murals.

“I get good comments, but the market is just nonexistent,” Souch says.

After attending Fairmont State College for five years, he transferred to West Virginia University where, after three years, he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree.

“I was never in a hurry to graduate,” he says.

He is also not in a hurry to finish his house, Souch says.

“It’s an artwork. I may just keep building for as long as I’m here.”